What sort of irks me is what a mixed bag EU regulation is. Some is good (GDPR), not denying that. Some is annoying (you’re going to be accepting cookies 100 times a day until you’re dead thanks to them), and Whatsapp runs on all devices, so while interoperability nice, even as a free-software, Linux person I don’t really care.
However, if you have to deal with friends or family in the US and you don’t have an iPhone though, god help you. They don’t care about this.
I guess my complaint is that EU regulation may seem legally elegant, but I think it is sometimes quite blind to the real situation on the ground.
It looks good on the books but we still, say, don’t have a standard ARM boot process for smartphones that would help users not be dependent on whatever shitty ROM the OEM wants them to have. That would be life changing, but it will never even be talked about.
Whatsapp runs on all devices
Nope. Android, iOS, Windows and Mac are not all devices. And web versions are far from ideal (some may suggest expanding web capabilities, but please don’t).
Mimimimimimimimimi
If you have nothing to say, say nothing at all.
The cookie consent also has a huge fail whale of unintended consequences - training users to click [accept], or really [anything], to make the annoyance just go away.
Nefarious actors have their run of the place now. They can slip onerous terms into EULAs and know they will largely be accepted.
That wont hold in court tho
Wait and see what happens when Google removes traditional tracking from Chrome and every sites start requiring registration to access content !
just get an extension and adblocker filters to automatically dismiss/block cookie dialogs and use an allowlist for sites from which you actually need to persist cookies in your browser’s settings and set your browser to delete everything else on exit. With Firefox and browsers based on it you can, in addition to that, use container tabs (try sticky containers extension) for even better context isolation.
Obviously. But that is very difficult on mobile.
on Firefox if a desktop addon has no mobile version you can look up how to add custom add-ons collections when it comes to cookie prompt blockers, but ublock origin and adding filters to it work out of the box. Recently also some apps started showing cookie prompts with no option to decline unless you pay, if they can work offline, make them so
I partially agree with you, and of course I hate those cookie banners, they’re completely annoying.
But please remember that it’s not the EU’s fault is every website is trying to violate your privacy.
If websites weren’t tracking everything you do, then cookie banners wouldn’t be needed.
I think we should collectively ask for websites to stop spying on us, not changing the cookie banners regulation.
That’s already a solution to cookie banners: the “do not track” setting. It’s been tested in court in Germany and confirmed to count as rejected permission for GDPR purposes. Websites dinky have to obey it.
It’s currently slowly gaining traction, there’s a privacy advocacy group suing high profile targets over this to create awareness.
We also need a formal change to the cookie law/GDPR to acknowledge “do not track” as the preferred method. Then the banners will slowly go away.
Yep, all the EU done is forced websites to have consent if the website want to process personal data. There are many analytics that does not process IP address or fingerprint and so does not require consent banner. Be annoyed on the websites, not this law.
Matrix will implement a bridge using the new api, that’s enough for me.
Honestly would love to use signal to chat with my whatsapp contacts. Signal could just throw in privacy notice when messaging with someone whatsapp or facebook messenger.
Currently I have signal installed and used to use it to message with my so but we have both moved to discord and use whatsapp to communicate with those that do not use discord.
Then too bad… Dont talk to them. If people want to talk to me they have to install signal.
This is the only path forward.
If.
This is the way!
moving from signal to discord is not going to be exactly helpful for your privacy, discord is completely unencrypted
I am aware of that but when all our friends or commities either use whatsapp or discord then it’s just more convenient. Honestly messaging these days is a mess
- Teams and Slack for work
- Whatapp and Discord for family, friends and interests/communities
- Signal for the techsavy friends
I really miss that fleeting moment when all messaging apps were using either open protocols or at least they weren’t hostile against alternative clients. It was really nice to be able to use one client to log in to gtalk, msn etc. at the same time.
I understand her point and imho that’s what makes signal a superior option to the others but because of these extreme choices I’ve seen the usage of signal gradually go down (might be wrong for the total number of users) around me. Now I don’t anyone who uses signal anymore.
it’s a real shame it’s ridiculous to be using whatsapp but I have whatsapp installed on my phone not signal because that’s what everyone uses.
Signal were fools to remove the SMS support from their app. That was a good way to get people in to use the system - they could have insecure SMS chats with those not on signal, and secure signal chats with those on it. The app would warn you when someone didn’t have signal and the chat was insecure.
It was a really good “trojan horse” route into people’s lives. I was using signal every day and it was easier encouraging others to make the switch because it was a convenient app.
Then the devs removed that and dumped all their users back onto other SMS apps.
Now I have 3 apps - an SMS app, Signal and WhatsApp. I barely ever use Signal now. I want to use it more but so few people I know use it, and it’s not the first place people message me from.
Removing SMS support was a huge strategic misstep. They should have been the bridge for people to move from SMS to secure chat.
While I do think you are correct, you have to remember a few things:
- SMS really isn’t used outside the US (and iMessage pretty much was the death of text messages and now iMessage also supports RCS)
- Open source projects can be strict about following a moral code
- Anything more than just sending secure messages is just an attack vector and more layers of code to maintain
A bit offtopic, but, are SMS free on the US?
Indeed, in my country SMS are not used at all. Too expensive compared to alternatives.
Here I pay 1 euro per month extra for unlimited calls+SMS. Still no one uses it.
Idk about other countries. But in India, SMS is pretty big for businesses to send updates to the customers. Like 2FA for bank transactions, delivery tracking, govt alerts etc. Customer to customer is almost nil except on rare occasions when maybe the internet is down and you need to send an urgent text.
And I should mention that domestic SMS is free (included with any active cellular plan)
So then it seems completely absurd signal is “not interested” in allowing any integration. They could just notify their users communications with WhatsApp users are unsecure.
I got my whole family on it, and generally all my closest friends have it as at least a backup. As the other chat apps falter it’s been easier to convert people.
I tried switching to Signal a couple years ago but I had to return to WhatsApp since literally no one of my friends and acquaintances did the jump. It wasn’t even considered an option by many. So it was either returning to Whatsapp or being cut off from everyone.
If people were a bit more open-minded Signal could be a good alternative. But alas…
can’t have 2 apps installed?
I was hoping to move to signal in the whatapp network. Unfortunately in Brazil you cannot live without whatapp.
You could try and run both
Keep whatsapp, and slowly switch contacts to Signal (it might just be close friends and family). That’s what people around me are doing
I have both WhatsApp and Signal installed.
In the 3 years or so since I installed Signal, I haven’t had a single conversation on it. Only a handful of people from my Contact book are showing as Signal users, and none of them people I speak to regularly.
I live in anticipation of someone deciding to message me on there, but I’m not exactly optimistic at this point.
My wife told me to fuck off when I installed signal on her phone 😔
Haha, that’s kinda funny. Then people are like.
Just tell your friends and family to stop using iMessage. Like everyone will be ok to switch their routine just like that.
It’s definitely not for everyone. For me it’s
- some use signal with me / others exclusively, sending the occasional message elsewhere when on a certain device or sharing within a platform
- some use signal for sensitive conversations, and use other platforms most of the time
- some just don’t. If I need to have a sensitive conversation with them, I do it in person
Sounds like you need some matrix bridges in your life.
Whatcha bridging to Matrix?
Honestly I started looking into a few of the easier ones and its a damn process so which one am I bridging? All of them. One at a time.
It’s on my list of things to explore soon 😄
I managed to convince one long distance friend a few years ago. So now I need to keep Signal just to be able to communicate with him.
me neither
Meta wants to federate with the whole fediverse eventually. This is first up, then Threads. Remains to be seen if they’ll bother with a Lemmy instance but I wouldn’t be shocked.
So far though the response by the fediverse has been “nah”.
EEE at its finest, like they did to XMPP
Wasn’t it google?
Both Google and Facebook.
It’s… I guess the ghost of their XMPP abandonment.
It’s a good move; it shows they are no interested in popularity but Privacy and Security
Using Threema is not an option. This is paid software and it is too difficult to purchase a license for this software when Google does not allow us to pay for purchases through their Android app store. No one from my entourage will bother paying for a license for this software using cryptocurrency. They will just install another messenger.
You can buy a license directly from Threema via credit card, btc or cash in the mail.
Know many people who bought Threema on Google Play
or even a Matrix service would mean a deterioration of our data protection standards
Why? They use same algos, same scheme. Just add support for matrix message format in your app.
WhatsApp is closed source, and obviously it must be able to decrypt messages for the end user to read them. Anything could happen to the unencrypted data at this point. Therefore it’s less secure allowing conversations to flow into that app.
Re-read my comment please. I’m talking about Matrix, not whatsapp. Not downvoting because you are correct, but it is out of context.
I believe Matrix doesn’t have nearly as strong (if any) metadata encryption as Signal
Use matrix, setup bridge (defederate from matrix network if you want), meet your friends where theyre at.
I tried to make a bridge to my telegram and Whatsapp account, but I didn’t get it to work. Do you have any guide to follow?
I just used the guides by mautrix for the respective bridges. https://docs.mau.fi/bridges/go/setup.html there are instructions for a bunch there that work well. What was the issue you faced?
Hi, average idiot here, whats matrix?
Its an open standard for communications (like xmpp, but the new hotness) with a focus on federating IRC chat. (lot of cool work on state resolution by them wrt that). So you can communicate with people on different matrix servers as long as they federate with each other. Additionally, they have built in support for bridges that let you connect to other people via matrix giving you a seamless experience on that service via matrix. Lemme know if you need more clarifications.
This is what I hate most about the privacy community, too fanatical and purist to allow extremely useful optional features that would allow them to reach more people.
If it’s an optional feature why are you complaining that the other businesses are refusing their option to federate with Facebook?
The issue is simple: Facebook will work to leech users away from other services, strengthening their position into a monopoly (if it isn’t already in some places). It is not a good thing for Facebook to get access to more users and steal their data.
I use Signal whenever I can because I’m not comfortable with Meta harvesting metadata of my conversations with people. guess what happens if Signal made it possible to talk to Whatsapp accounts?
You could go on without doing it. I would like to use signal to signal, but there are literally zero people interested in my environment :-(
Using signal just me would be much better than using whatsapp directly, and would reduce the data collected.If signal suddenly stopped being mostly a geek desert and people could still talk to all their contacts, don’t you think they would be much more willing to move? The more people, the more people interested in migrating, and the less data for meta.
don’t you think they would be much more willing to move?
no, why would they, if they could talk to Signal anyway?
Because when you give most people the choice of convenience vs privacy, they’ll choose the thing that they can feel 99 times out of 100(convenience ). Most people don’t care about metadata because first of all they have no idea that’s even a thing, let alone what it does. And they’re not visibly affected by it. The difference between using signal and Whatsapp for the vast majority of people is the fact that one is green and has everyone you know on it and the other is blue and nobody besides me uses it.
But, if you give signal the convenience of being able to use it with everyone, then the choice becomes “do I wanna use this app that my friend is saying is spying on me or do I wanna use the secure, hacker app?”
And hopefully, more and more people will switch and we can be rid of fucking meta
If the user base is signal’s big draw, I’m afraid we’re screwed with such a tiny one against those titans.
Signal users are far more likely to need to use whatsapp than the other way around, and migrating to signal is a huge loss with not very popular gains. I don’t see how it could compete on a level playing field, but that’s where the opportunity to eliminate signal’s huge disadvantage comes in.
On the one hand I agree with them sticking to their guns.
On the other, the number of contacts I have using signal has dropped off a cliff, from 12 to just one. It certainly isn’t rising. The people I know who used it have abandoned it and went back to WhatsApp.
Getting rid of SMS support was a mistake.
I’d personally prefer that when messaging with someone using WhatsApp, they make clear to you that Facebook can and will have some metadata, but not the contents of the chat itself.
IMO a good but imperfect solution is preferable to nobody using Signal.
I’d personally prefer that when messaging with someone using WhatsApp, they make clear to you that Facebook can and will have some metadata, but not the contents of the chat itself.
If you believe that, then I think you’re one of Zuckerberg’s proverbial “dumb fucks”. Not that I mean to be insulting, but that’s literally what he thinks of his users.
Facebook’s WhatsApp is almost certainly filled with backdoors and exploits. In particular, with Android they often bypass Play Store checks by bundling system apps directly via the manufacturer.
Im not one of his users and don’t want to be. That’s why I want an open and secure protocol for cross-client messaging.
Facebook’s WhatsApp is almost certainly filled with backdoors and exploits. In particular, with Android they often bypass Play Store checks by bundling system apps directly via the manufacturer.
Yes… which is why I don’t want to use it.
Perfect is the enemy of good
This is exactly the problem. If they support interoperability then they will allow their users to continue using the Signal app which has high security standards, even if the particular conversation is not as secure as native signal conversations and they can’t control what the third-party app does. This will help grow the Signal network (because now it is easier for WhatsApp users to incrementally switch to Signal) and become more secure.
By rejecting interoperability they may be slightly improving the privacy of the 1% of users where their conversation partner would have switched to Signal, but are harming privacy the 99% of users that will now need to switch to WhatsApp for those converstions and are harming their future network growth (which would bring even more users to a private solution).
I would state it even more generally, something like “when chatting with WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger users Signal can only ensure no data is shared with third parties from your device …” or something around the lines of that
they make clear to you that Facebook can and will have some metadata, but not the contents of the chat itself.
You thought you’re safe and private when the content is encrypted? LOL, no. Metadata are much more useful to Facebook, and to the intelligence services.
“We Kill People Based on Metadata.” – General Michael Hayden, former Director of NSA and CIA
My point isn’t that metadata isn’t useful for them, there’s no need to be condescending about things I never said.
My point is metadata should be proected as content does. While IM platform needs to know which message should be delived to whom, they don’t need that after being delivered, nor have it profiled.
Agreed.
I disagree. When sending SMS you are leaking info like when, to whom and how big message you sent to a lot of spying agencies.
You do that regardless of which app you use to send SMS.
That’s why I don’t use SMS at all
Cool, but that’s not an argument against SMS support in Signal.
Back in the 80s and 90s we imagined a world of interoperable standards all agreed upon by the industry leaders for the benefit of all.
Then capitalism took over and shat on EVERYTHING.
In a statement to the publication, Signal president Meredith Whittaker says, “Our privacy standards are extremely high and not only will we not lower them, we want to keep raising them. Currently, working with Facebook Messenger, iMessage, WhatsApp, or even a Matrix service would mean a deterioration of our data protection standards.”
Ugh, okay Meredith, let’s pretend it’s impossible to handle this with user experience that makes the user acknowledge their conversation with a WhatsApp user is not secure. Meanwhile if the only viable way for this conversion to occur is to have WhatsApp on both ends, the situation less secure. So according to Meredith, the choice is between less overall security or not having conversations with people who don’t use Signal. That could makes sense for her salary but it surely is a net negative for Signal users some of which will have to install WhatsApp since they won’t be able to afford not to have those conversations.
Ugh, okay Meredith, let’s pretend it’s impossible to handle this with user experience that makes the user acknowledge their conversation with a WhatsApp user is not secure. Meanwhile if the only viable way for this conversion to occur is to have WhatsApp on both ends, the situation less secure.
It is a privacy concern, not a security one.
So according to Meredith, the choice is between less overall security or not having conversations with people who don’t use Signal.
Could you cite this please? Because I do not see this beeing said or implied.
That could makes sense for her salary but it surely is a net negative for Signal users some of which will have to install WhatsApp since they won’t be able to afford not to have those conversations.
Entirley different conversation, accusations and projections. So dropping this.
Ugh, okay Meredith, let’s pretend it’s impossible to handle this with user experience that makes the user acknowledge their conversation with a WhatsApp user is not secure. Meanwhile if the only viable way for this conversion to occur is to have WhatsApp on both ends, the situation less secure.
I don’t agree with this. The only way to have the conversation is to have Signal at both ends.
while i see where you’re coming from, being able to message WhatsApp users from a client app that respects privacy would be better than being forced to have WhatsApp installed on your device, with it snooping casually on your everyday device usage and your contact list and so on.
WhatsApp is the only Facebook app on my phone and i’d love to get rid of it without losing the ability to message all those buffons using it (which make up for 99% of my social circle)
BTW, you can somewhat mitigate the spyware by using Shelter.
It’s doable we are not in the kindergarten and school groups we might miss a few things but worked so fast for us. And I convinced both my job teams to use Signal
Yeah we’re like super serious about privacy so we require you to make you’re account based on a unique, hard to change, personally identifiable, insecure data point and require you to show it to everyone you talk to. The fact that they’re only now starting to test hiding your phone number is beyond asinine. Any arguments signal has about security I might listen to but their concept of privacy is laughable.
a net negative for Signal users some of which will have to install WhatsApp since they won’t be able to afford not to have those conversations.
I just had to do exactly this for a little league group 😭
It’s the same argument they used when ditching SMS-support ☹️
I’m not nearly as salty about SMS because of the following differences from the WhatsApp scenario. Signal-SMS was only supported on Android, call it half of Signal users whereas a potential WhatsApp integration (or lack thereof) would affect nearly all Signal users. Then the Android users who have to reach others over SMS already have a built-in system app that does this, so they don’t have to install third party app that exists to vacuum data. So the downgrade for the Android Signal user is in ease of use, not in overall security.
Except most people are not going to tolerate having a multiplicity of apps, and if people in your circle don’t already use signal, they definitely won’t now. Whereas previously, I was getting pretty decent traction from people slowly adding it.
In the modern age, it’s getting easier to hard-line your messaging platform though.
If people are already used to having multiple messaging clients for multiple people, it’s less of a jump to add one more.
This has been my experience as well. In the past friends and family were more reluctant to break away from whatever their default communication app was. These days most people are already familiar with the idea of using one thing to text, another to “message”, and often more than that. I’ve had great success converting people to more secure platforms now that they understand the process.
Don’t the built in system apps also vacuum data?
This is Lemmy. Here we believe everything vacuums data!
The built-in apps get and send SMS from a system service on Android. In nearly every case the system app is from the same vendor as the system itself which means there’s no significant opportunity for data disclosure that doesn’t already exist within the system. If anything , the system has much larger opportunity to vacuum data. Therefore if you don’t trust the system SMS app, you shouldn’t trust the system either. If you trust the system, you can probably trust the system SMS app too. Third party SMS apps present net additional opportunity for data disclosure so one has to trust the one they use doesn’t vacuum data.
